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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Festival Shrines 



By 
WILL SCRANTON WOODHULL 



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CJutcimtait 

JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 

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EATON AND MAINS 



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COPYRIGHT, 19 13, BY 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 







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TO 

QL p. $L 

WHOSE PRAISE FOR THESE FRAGMENTS 
MEANS MOST TO ME 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Thanksgiving Shrines, - - - 11 

Christmas-Tide, 41 

Easter Miracles, 57 

" Sunset and Evening Star," - - 89 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 



WHEN AUTUMN WALKS ACROSS THE HILLS 

When Autumn walks across the hills, 
The hunchback maples blush aflame; 
The slender asp-trees quiver white 
Through shining green shot with the light 
Of midnight moons. 

The red-stemmed osiers, bending where 
The brooks run still, full proudly wear 
Their royal robes. With soft acclaim 
Come canons musical with rills 
When Autumn walks across the hills. 

When Autumn walks across the hills, 

The peasant sage unheeding stands 

Dust-gray upon the long gray slope; 

The gloomy cedar, void of hope, 

Knows not, nor cares. 

The dark-browed laurel, crouching low, 

Hears not her feet impassioned go; 

Yet, on the dull up-tilted lands, 

Each step the riot color fills 

When Autumn walks across the hills. 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

MY friend and I can never go walking 
together with much satisfaction to both, 
for he must always have a goal, if it be 
for no other purpose than that of a turning-post 
to indicate the exact spot at which the outward 
journey should end and the homeward trip begin. 
Further, he will go to that particular spot and 
return from it by the legitimate routes — -roads that 
run straight and corners that are square. He will 
not tolerate those cross-cuts that charm me with 
their uncertain promises and their childlike mys- 
teries. He abhors the obtuse angles of a highland 
trail and abominates the sinuous curves of a low- 
land path. The former, he acknowledges, may be 
necessary evils, but the latter he holds to be in- 
excusable impositions upon the time and patience 
of the wayfarer. Now I, to my friend's supreme 
disgust, am different. The straight road is very 
tiresome to me unless, perchance, it be lined with 
one of those old-fashioned rail-fences that offer, 
whimsically, to the traveler a possible surprise in 

ii 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

every corner. In such a case, on a sudden — and 
in the suddenness of the discovery lies much of the 
charm — we find here a teeming ant-hill, like a 
miniature city of men, giving birth to a thousand 
fanciful conjectures concerning its thronging life; 
there we see all at once a bunch of crane's-bill, its 
delicate lavender hues blending with the soft grays 
of the weathered rails behind; further on we start 
a rabbit from his couching place in the thick grass, 
and watch him run across the pasture with sundry 
saucy flirts of that bunch of cotton called by 
courtesy his tail, and repeated petulant kicks of his 
long hind feet, which express to his satisfaction his 
opinion of us. Nor is the highway unattractive if 
it run straight through a bit of woodland. Then 
it becomes the wonderful nave of a Gothic cathe- 
dral open to the skies, flanked with shadowy clois- 
ters among the columnar trunks, and filled to the 
central aisle with kneeling worshipers of hazel- 
brush and blackberry bushes, who whisper their 
prayers while a gentle, weird wind-spirit moves 
with halting penitence toward the distant altar-hill. 
Such are pleasant enough, but, in the main, I 
find no use for roads save for certain utilitarian 
purposes, with which I will have nothing to do 

12 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

to-day. When people ask me where I am going, 
I like to answer with the alluring participle of 
aimless activity rather than the stern prepositional 
phrase of exact location: "I am not going any- 
where, — just walking." So, forgetting the points 
of the compass and becoming blind to the familiar 
landmarks, I follow the path or leave it, climb 
the hill or skirt its base, plunge into the cool halls 
and lofty chambers of the wood or seek the wide, 
wind-swept spaces of the open field, as the whim 
takes me or the nearest charm allures me. My 
friend's honest and emphatic execration of the whole 
proceeding is to me somewhat incomprehensible and 
wholly amusing. 

All of which is to say that my friend is logical 
and thinks, while I am imaginative and dream. So 
I call his arguments dry, and he says that my 
meditations fully prove the possibility of a complete 
mental vacuum. Therefore, since each man can 
do what the other can not, we do vastly admire 
each other, albeit our minds, like our feet, stray 
far apart. Thus it came to pass that, on a Thanks- 
giving morning, he and I sat together in the church, 
and while waiting for the services to begin — for, 
as becomes men and ministers, we came early — each 

13 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

praised God after his own fashion. He looked 
about the place of worship, appraising its practical 
worth and, meantime, gave God formal thanks for 
health and for prosperity, for home and for loved 
ones, for friends and for their kindnesses, for a 
free country abiding in peace, for the high privilege 
of feeding and clothing some of God's poor, of 
proclaiming the gospel of the Master, and of ex- 
tending in some measure the Kingdom of heaven. 
I trust that I was not wholly unmindful of these 
things, but I can not be sure, for hardly was I 
seated, when my eyes found a wonderful window 
in which ever walked the Master with face aglow 
and gesturing hand, while on either side a thirsty 
man drank deep from the fountain and knew it 
not. I did not much notice the men, nor did I 
think of the way to Emmaus, nor of what He 
talked, for I saw only that He was walking, and 
that the path went not straight, but curved gently, 
as though it would extend the glory of that hour, 
and that it passed into the window-casing, and thus 
became my own, winding where I would. Straight- 
way I dreamed; the men were left behind and the 
Master walked with me, and the way led through 
the year I had just lived. It all seemed new to 

14 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

me that morning in the church, though I had not 
lived blindly. Here and there He showed me a 
Jacob's well, at which I could have found unexpected 
living water, and here and there a Bethel, where 
I might have reared an altar to the present God 
out of my "stony griefs." Then we came to a 
Pisgah of glorious prospect, and what was dim 
when I looked alone, became richly clear now He 
stood by my side. And there was my Patmos of 
bitter suffering ; but I forgot its hardness that morn- 
ing when, by only a gesture, He revealed to me 
with a wondrous vividness the vision of the City 
of God which that hour contained. 

But all these are hid away in the secret places 
of the soul, which can be opened to none except 
now and again to our high priests of friendship. 
Of these, therefore, I can not speak. But the pe- 
culiar wonder and glory of the walk I took with 
the Master that morning were found in the fashion 
in which He would be showing me every little way 
some nook or corner made bright by the presence 
of God, places where I might have raised little 
shrines and offered oblations of praise with very 
great joy. These are so many that I can not tell 
of them all, and so common to every life that you 

15 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

will soon be finding some of your own, and they, 
being your own, will prove far more interesting 
to you than any of mine. 

One of these shrines was in a sunset. My day 
had been hard, filled to overflowing with toil that 
came to nothing. Annoyances had swarmed about 
me, failure in precious plans seemed imminent, life 
appeared cheap and unworthy, its dust and turmoil 
offended ear and eye. Besides, I had not borne 
myself altogether like a man, and I was somewhat 
shamed. Back through that day we went, the 
Master and I. The weariness of it drew down 
the corners of my mouth again, its discouragements 
clouded my eyes, and the sin that entered it red- 
dened my cheek. Through its hours we passed 
silently till we came to its sunset and stood on 
the hill, whence I saw the sun sink into the broken 
clouds of evening. I remembered that it had 
brought something of comfort to me; but with 
Him by my side I saw that God had sent much 
more by it than I had taken. So here I built the 
Shrine of the August Fellowship. 

All day long I had worked, and much of my toil 
had come to nothing. All day long the sun with 

16 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

infinite energy had been shooting out its shafts of 
light and heat, and most of them were lost in the 
vast darkness and the measureless cold of the uni- 
versal spaces. From our point of view, however, 
the few rays that fell upon our pin-point of matter 
were indispensable and justified the great waste. 
Must I complain, then, because so much of my day's 
work was wasted if by some word or deed I helped 
some one a little? Shall I not be a brother to the 
sun and scatter broadcast what I am able, that a 
little may be useful somewhere? But the annoy- 
ances of the day? Did not the steady sun pull 
against the attraction of a million million stars and 
pursue his course with calmness? Indeed, did not 
these very hindrances hold him in his path? Why, 
then, should I have fretted about the obstacles and 
the distractions of the day? I made my way to 
the sunset in spite of them, or, it may be, because 
of them. The sun and I are fellows. It sinks 
behind the western hills, its light is lost, its heat 
is Being dissipated, it seems to fail; but we know 
that in the morning it will sweep over the hills 
in the east with light and warmth again. And is 
not my failure more apparent than real, and shall 
I not rise to other service and to other success for- 

17 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

ever? The pink and the yellow and the red and 
the scarlet that made the beauty of the sunset were 
possible only because the dust rose and the clouds 
gathered. The peculiar magnificence of the hour 
was found in the triumph of the sun over the 
sordid dust and the heavy clouds. How blind I 
was, not to see that the cheap, dusty turmoil of 
unworthiness that offended me was but my oppor- 
tunity to reveal what glory was in me. So I was 
reminded of my sin. My shame deepened until 
I remembered that every sunset is followed by a 
sunrise. Then I knelt in the strangely quiet twi- 
light and found the place of pardon. From it I 
came with a solemn gladness to face the unborn 
morrow. Part of this I saw that day, and part in 
my dream. But in my dream I saw clearly that, 
after all, I was not just a brother to the insensate 
sun moving blindly as it must, but a fellow-worker 
with Him who upholdeth all things by the word 
of His power. I was a thinking part of His vast 
and mighty universe, an intelligent element in His 
eternal plan. More than this I saw, standing be- 
side the Christ. Since my best offering was a will- 
ing, a chosen service, I was become a partner of 
God. So that Thanksgiving morning I erected a 

18 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

Shrine there to the August Fellowship, and many 
a time since I have found it a place of praise. 

Many another shrine He showed me, but of them 
I w T ill not say one word, lest I never cease, until 
we come to the day made sacred by the laughter 
of a babe. There I built the Shrine of the Child's 
Laughter. It was in the full flush of new-born 
spring. The tender grass was weaving its trans- 
lucent fabric over the gray-brown of last year's 
blades ; the trees were hung with a shimmering veil 
of soft green, save that the maples were red with 
buds, and the oaks, sullenly repelling the caresses 
of the sun, held still their winter bareness. On 
the slopes of the hills the broad wheatfields were 
squares of dark green, and above them the snow 
lay on the shoulders of the mountains, dazzling 
white in the morning sun. The robins were sing- 
ing cheerily, and the sparrows chattered busily about 
their tasks of home-building. My own pulses beat 
warmly, while in me, like a rising tide, surged the 
joy of living, the sense of power, and the desire 
for accomplishment. It was not at all strange, then, 
that a toddling babe, fleeing with uncertain haste 
from the mother's outstretched hands, should stay 

19 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

my steps and win a word from my lips. But its 
confidence was not to be given carelessly to every 
stray passer-by. When I stopped, the babe came 
to a stand, wavering from one foot to the other 
till it solved that particular problem in the main- 
tenance of its equilibrium. Then it looked at me; 
first timidly, next questioningly, then with a grow- 
ing confidence, and at last with a complete trust. 
What its eyes, accustomed so short a time ago to 
angels' faces, saw in mine to win the little heart, 
I know not; but this I know — and when I re- 
membered it, in the presence of the Master, it be- 
came the surpassing glory of that spring day and 
an abiding cause for thanksgiving — the babe trusted 
me and came to me gravely, with increasing eager- 
ness, and held out its tiny, chubby arms. I lifted 
the little one high in the air, and held it so. Then 
came the laugh, a glint in the blue eyes, a lifting 
of the corners of the tender mouth, a parting of 
the bow-shaped lips, a wrinkling of rosy cheeks, 
a gleam of four white teeth; then, the eyes being 
lost in the merrily furrowed cheeks and the mouth 
opened wide, the laughter gurgled out in liquid 
sweetness. Starlight in the shining eyes, moonlight 
in the parted lips, dawnlight in the dimpling cheeks 

20 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

with their roses, sunrise in the scarlet tongue-tip 
guarded by the snowy peaks of the teeth, the full 
choir of birdsongs in the bubbling laughter. Nor 
is this all, for, though I knew it but dimly till the 
Master showed me, the sweetest glories of heaven 
beat in upon my soul from that merry face. So 
it came to pass that I, laughing, gave the merry 
child into the hands of the laughing mother and 
went my way not knowing the miracle that had 
been wrought in me, for that morning there came 
to me a temptation to dishonesty in subtle strength, 
and I might have yielded but for the memory of 
the child's confidence. In the afternoon came 
somewhat of uncleanness clad in its daintiest gar- 
ments, and surely it had soiled me but for the 
thought of the limpid depths of purity in the eyes 
of the child. And that evening, as I went home 
through the sullen dripping of a cold rain, there 
rose up out of certain failures of the day a monster 
of discouragement by which I would have been 
sore wounded were it not that I caught just a 
glimpse of the little one's face in the window, 
and was reminded that, however I had failed other- 
wise, still I had brought something of happiness 
to one child beloved of the Master and but lately 

21 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

come from Paradise. As I in my dream walked 
again through that day I realized what a rich 
benison came to me in the laughter of the child. 
So there I built my altar and laid on it my praise- 
offering. 

Nor can I forbear telling you of my Shrine in 
the Place of the Silences. Sometimes I have thought 
that one reason for the barren spots of earth in 
which man can not dwell with his continual hurry 
and clatter is that he may withdraw into these 
solitudes now and again, according to his need, and 
listen to the voice that Elijah heard on Horeb, "a 
sound of gentle stillness." Often I tire of men 
and their affairs, though I love them individually 
and collectively, and hold it to be an ideal of 
Homeric grandeur "to live by the side of the road 
and be a friend to man." So it came to pass that 
one morning I found fault with the breakfast coffee, 
the unvarying excellence of which is one proof of 
my good matrimonial judgment, left the house with 
a curt and inclusive "Good-bye" to the whole 
family, was brutal to a timid college boy trying to 
make his way up the steeps of learning with a 
prospectus under his coat, listened indifferently to 

22 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

the sad story of a burdened woman, needlessly of- 
fended my Sunday-school superintendent, crumpled 
up and hurled into the waste-basket with a minis- 
terial malediction a bit of paper on which I had 
been endeavoring to outline a sermon from the text, 
"But let patience have her perfect work." My 
lunch-table behavior I will cover with a charitable 
veil of silence. Enough to say that, when it was 
over, my wife, with a wisdom born out of much 
association with me, suggested that I go fishing, and 
I had just sufficient sense left to take her advice. 
So I went out after trout and found a shrine. 

I was surly enough as I went through the streets, 
but somehow the magic of the open began its work 
very soon. The stiff climb up the bench, the long 
walk across the rising slope of sage, untangled the 
scowls. The mild excitement of surprising the 
draws by sudden flanking movements which carried 
me across them with the least expenditure of energy, 
the startling leap of a long-eared rabbit, the swift 
rush of the sage-hen into flight from almost beneath 
my feet, charged again and again with much effect 
against my stubborn host of blues; but they were 
not wholly routed until I heard the soft roaring of 
the hidden brook and hurried down the slope to 

23 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

lie at full length on the stones and drink of its ice- 
cold, crystal waters from a little pool in the lee 
of a rock. I drank and rested and drank again, 
thinking the while, with a new sense of the provi- 
dence in them, of the words, "He leadeth me be- 
side the waters of rest." 

The story of an afternoon with the trout is always 
the same and always different: the same shouting 
stream, with the quiet pools where it stops to get 
its breath; the rocks and the willows and the black 
birch, with the occasional fir or copse of quaking 
asp ; the echoes from the cliff and the strange voices 
in the brook; the continual matching of strength 
and toughness against the rocks and the brush, and 
of wit and skill against the fish; the same patient 
insinuation of rod-tip and fly down arrowy riffles 
or across dark pools ; the same repeated thrills from 
the strike of the fish — the tug, the dive, the rush, 
the leap; the same joy of victory when you land 
your prize, mingled with a bit of pity that so brave 
a fighter should fight in vain; the same bitter dis- 
appointment and self-arraignment when the biggest 
get away ; the same unconsciousness of time and dis- 
stance — these are all the same, yet, in some unac- 
countable way, these manifold experiences are always 

24 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

different, so that each adventure after the speckled 
braves stands out vividly by itself. 

I will not speak in detail of this excursion, only 
near the head of the stream I found the hour so 
late and the creel so full that I put away my 
tackle and started for home, across the silver-gray 
ridge which cut the western blue with its sinuous 
skyline and stood ready to cast its shadow across 
the narrow valley. This spur I climbed, and found 
as I passed the crest that the westering sun still 
shone warmly on its afternoon side. Being weary 
and at peace with all the world — a fact of which 
some were still in ignorance — -I slipped off my 
heavy basket and stretched myself on a bit of grassy 
slope to rest and gaze and invite my soul. I was 
too content even to be ashamed of my unmitigated 
surliness of the forenoon. I looked forward with 
something of complacent joy to the privilege of ask- 
ing my wife to forgive me, of apologizing to my 
superintendent, of visiting the burdened woman and 
helping as I might be able, and of buying a book 
from the college boy. The trout in my basket had 
not died in vain. Then I ceased to think, and fell 
a-gazing. There at my feet was the city, overhung 
.with a cloud of dust and smoke, where lived those 

25 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

dear friends of mine with whom and for whom I 
joyed to labor. Beyond lay the irrigated valley, 
"full of ditches," with its scattered houses hiding 
in clumps of trees, its fields of golden wheat, brown 
plowed land, and dark-green alfalfa. Through the 
valley the river ran in its winding lane of willows, 
and away beyond, on the gray of the desert, it wound 
its silver loops that glistened in the far-slanted rays 
of the sun. Clear against the distant horizon stood 
the ragged outline of the real mountains with I 
knew not what mysteries of stream and peak, of 
windy highland and resounding canon. While I 
looked, I listened as idly. I listened, but heard 
nothing save the faintest ghosts of sound, a wisp 
of music from the brook, the passing buzz of a 
single restless fly, the barest whisper of a runaway 
baby breeze, and those faint tinklings that come in 
such a silence only to him who does not try to 
hear, as though playful, timid fairies rang their 
silver bells when it seemed safe. Silence was about 
me. I rested on the silent earth; I looked out over 
a silent landscape; the silent air hung motionless 
around me; the afternoon sunshine seemed a warm 
and visible silence. Silence held me up, covered 
me over, stretched out illimitably on every side; 

26 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

silence pressed upon me, embraced and held me 
close. Such stillness seemed sacred. I dared not 
move lest I break it; I breathed quietly; my very 
heart beat softly. I floated on a great sea of 
silence; I lay beneath a sky of stillness. For a 
season I was carried beyond all sense of space or 
of time. Then a wind whispered softly, and out 
of the canon came a low rush of the brook's song, 
and a bumble-bee boomed past, and the call of 
a boy driving cattle came up from the valley at 
my feet. As I watched his herd I could hear the 
beating of their feet on the hard ground; the veer- 
ing wind brought to my ears the rattle of a wagon 
on the valley road ; then the great shop- whistle sent 
its deep note rolling up from the city, and I rose 
and with a high and solemn joy went down from 
the place of the silences to a larger life and a more 
perfect work. 

As I went I remembered that Jacob had caught 
a glimpse of heaven from a wilderness, that 
Moses heard the Divine Voice from granite Sinai 
and fell headlong into God's arms from Pisgah, 
that David found the Shepherd of Israel on the 
sheep-dotted hills of Judah. Elijah heard Him in 
the silences of Carmel and Horeb; Jesus retired 

27 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

more than once into a mountain to pray, and John 
saw things on lonely Patmos that broke his speech 
into splendid fragments. And I — the thought shook 
my soul with rapture — I that very afternoon had 
come into this wondrous fellowship of solitude and 
with these of old had worshiped in the Shrine of 
the Silences. 

Perhaps because the contrast made my heart a 
little more sensitive I found the Shrine of the 
Market-place the very next day. And Jesus would 
stop there even as He had tarried on the hillsides. 
In the noisy, busy, mighty, brave market-place He 
showed me a shrine that I had seen before but 
dimly. It was named the Shrine of the Unbounded 
Brotherhood. The shop-windows with their rich 
display were to me that day centers from which, 
through innumerable intricacies, ran lines of com- 
munication to the corners of the world, involv- 
ing what abilities and dominions of man I could 
hardly conjecture, and suggesting as various needs. 
In the wide sweep of his activities, in the resistless 
might of his accomplishments, in the vast dimensions 
of his desires, and in the measureless variety of his 
needs — how like to God is man ! "Sons of the Most 

28 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

High/' said the shop-windows to me that day. And 
this further: men dwelling at the ends of the earth 
from one another, and as far apart in race and cus- 
toms, in philosophy and religion are still brothers 
by virtue of their giving and receiving. 

The steady, purposeful, interrelated flitting of 
the shuttles of commerce, the intricately reciprocal 
movements of the great loom of business, the weav- 
ing of the many-colored threads of trade into one 
far-spread fabric of life, startled me anew with the 
consciousness of the universal reign of law, a do- 
minion that bound us all together in a kind of in- 
evitable fraternity. I discovered a tender pity in 
my heart for the man who was crushed because 
he did not know the law or forgot it. I was more 
grieved for those unwilling martyrs who through 
the very perfecting of the machinery of commerce 
and industry came into a heritage of misery. Still 
the vision I had of an infinitely complicated force 
moving ever upward toward "one far-off event," 
according to a law that never varies, not even 
through the pity of a Heavenly Father, gave me a 
deep sense, not so much of my personal security 
as of the safety of the race. In the midst of 
blunder and futile effort to conform to constantly 

29 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

changing conditions, out of toil and sweat and 
seeming accident I beheld brokenly through the 
scaffolding the edifice of the ultimate purpose of 
our God arising beautiful in its delicate fitnesses 
and sublime in its race-wide and age-long measures. 
On the cornerstone I w r as able, with the Master by 
my side, to read the inscription, The Common- 
wealth of Brothers. I saw a racial destiny uniting 
men in an all-inclusive fraternity. 

My understanding grew as I saw men marching 
under the banner of a trades union, watched other 
men coming from a meeting of a manufacturers' 
association, read the names on the directorate of a 
huge corporation, and caught a glimpse of capital 
and labor working out a collective bargain called 
a wage-scale for a hundred thousand men. I found 
the symbol of it all in a buzzing, clanging factory, 
where a host of men worked at a thousand tasks that 
at the last would be welded into one product. This 
was but a microcosm, a miniature of that great in- 
terwoven world of work in which one man is served 
by a thousand, and in his turn serves a thousand. 
In my shrine I was able to see an ever-widening, 
self-chosen brotherhood of work in which each has 
his own task and in which all join together in pro- 
ducing Life. 30 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

I stood in the market-place among men. I 
watched their meetings and their partings ; I listened 
to their agreements and their strifes; I heard their 
congratulations and their condolences. It was 
strangely given to me to see into their hidden lives. 
Their plans and hopes, their ambitions, their suc- 
cesses and their failures, their joys and their bitter 
sorrows, that which was in them of worthiness and 
that which soiled them with its own uncleanness, — 
all were revealed to me. Much that was ignoble 
I saw; but this I well-nigh forgot in the glory of 
nobility that shone from so many knightly lives. 
One man was fighting to maintain his business 
with his back against the wall, but he bore himself 
bravely and honorably. Some workmen came from 
a factory-gate that would not open in the morning, 
nor for many another morning. The wages had 
stopped, but the lads and lassies must eat still, and 
fuel and clothing must be bought and the rent paid. 
Yet they faced the trying search for work and the 
possible destitution with a laugh, and with mutual 
good wishes they parted and went their separate 
ways right bravely. A man walked down the 
street wondering whether the child he had left at 
the little home sick unto death still lived, and yet 

31 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

the friends whom he greeted found his voice only 
a little less merry and his smile only a little less 
bright than on other days. I saw men giving, too, 
to help another — poor men in a continual hand-to- 
hand struggle with sordid poverty giving to aid a 
wounded brother with a liberality that ought to 
make us all ashamed because we have so fulsomely 
praised those who, with all their munificent gifts, 
have never known a touch of self-denial, and be- 
cause we have forgotten these who give their mites, 
all that they have, even their livings. So there 
came to me a great gladness. I saw beneath the 
hard hurry of the market-place a brotherhood of 
knightly hearts that forgot all things before honor 
and love and each other's needs. To my own heart 
came the memory of that incident of unexpected 
mercy on the Jericho road. It became to me, in 
that hour, more than an example — a prophecy of 
that unbounded brotherhood in which the hands 
and minds and hearts of all shall be joined together 
in bringing to pass the common good. With the 
Master I lifted up my eyes and saw God in that 
shrine hammering out His dream of the perfect 
brotherhood. The God of the silences, whose vast 
train filled all the temple of the hills, appeared to 

32 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

me also as the God of the rattling market-place, 
where hosts of busy men were helping Him work 
out His Fatherly purpose. 

On the first real winter night of that same No- 
vember I found my Shrine of a Book. I had 
finished the work of the day; its problems had 
been laid aside till morning; the loved ones of the 
home had retired, and I was alone in the quiet 
enjoyment of such a delicious sense of freedom and 
ease as comes when one lays aside a heavy burden 
after bearing it for hours. Outside the wind 
howled, the driving snow bit viciously at the 
window-glass, the bare trees clashed their branches 
together; somewhere a loose board rattled; the 
bitter, savage night had its way. But in the room 
the wisdom of man had imprisoned somewhat of 
summer. The open fire glowed richly red; the 
incandescent filament sent a flood of brilliance from 
the study-lamp. The shade directed the radiance 
downward on the polished oak of the table, the 
book in my lap, and the rich red of the rug, and 
held it back from the upper corners of the room, 
where the soft shadows lay. The comfortable neg- 
ligence of dress; the soft, firm embrace of the 
3 33 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

leather rocker; the rich morocco, the smooth paper, 
the excellent typography of the book, the contrast 
between the calm brightness within and the stormy 
darkness without made the room seem like the land 
of the lotus-eaters, where it is always afternoon. 
With a long-drawn breath of ease I opened the book 
leisurely, and straightway there leaped out from 
the page a sword. I forgot the bitter night outside, 
the warm comfort within. The message of the 
book stabbed me wide awake. My eyes leaped from 
sentence to sentence ; my lips paled ; I almost forgot 
to breathe. The weapon from the book slashed 
through my wrappings of self-esteem, cut away my 
false confidence, showed me to myself in weakness 
and in dire peril, pierced to the dividing asunder 
of bone and marrow. I do not wisely call the 
message a sword, for it was not wielded by the 
hand of an enemy. Rather was it the keen lancet 
of the Divine Surgeon wherewith He excised from 
my soul a tumor that was fast becoming malignant. 
Before I closed the book I prayed intensely and 
with a clinging faith — and not without an answer. 
That Thanksgiving morning, as I looked again on 
the pages of the book, with the Master by my side, 
I understood far better than before what an utter- 

34 



THANKSGIVING SHRINES 

most need it had met for me. So I bowed my head 
as I sat, and thanked God that He had led me 
to the Shrine of the Book. 

Then the first notes of the great organ — rich, 
tender, and mighty — rose and swelled in harmoni- 
ous grandeur, and my Savior and I came back to 
the window again. Our path had led through the 
whole year, ending where it began on that solemn 
festival morning. The twelvemonth had been won- 
drously glorified by His presence along its ways. 
I have told you of only a few of the shrines He 
showed me. Others there were and valleys of rest 
into which He led my tired feet, and peaks of glory 
from which He swept away the clouds. Now the 
master at the organ poured out his soul through 
its marvelous pipes. We heard the wind lisp 
through miles of prairie-grass; a host of meadow- 
larks called to one another in melodious confusion, 
and were answered by a multitude of blackbirds in 
full-rushing harmony. The rain pattered on the 
roof and tinkled on the lake; brooks laughed over 
their pebbles and cascades shouted above their boul- 
ders; seas called majestically from far away. We 
heard the mingled voices of many waters. Then 

35 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

the glory of the music rose higher. The organ 
shook, the walls trembled, the imprisoned air 
throbbed in a rapture of melody. The reverbera- 
tion of distant thunder was heard; the voices of 
a singing multitude swelled ever louder; the jubi- 
lant anthems of the angelic host burst in billows of 
music over the parapets of heaven. A great choir 
articulated the speechless harmonies into the words 
of inspired verse. The marvels of science and of 
art united with devotion in the praise of God ; but 
somehow, as the eyes of the pictured Christ looked 
right comradely into mine, and His hand pointed 
down the path we had just walked together, above 
all rose the silent praise of my heart to God, for 
on that wonderful morning He had brought me 
to the Shrine of the Window. 

On the way home my friend remarked that the 
preacher was an able man ; that the organ was very 
good ; that the church would seat nearly a thousand, 
though the arrangement of the pews might be im- 
proved so as to increase its capacity; that some of 
the leads of the Emmaus window were loose. I 
held my peace. 



36 



CHRISTMAS-TIDE 



THEY KNEW 

O'er little, lonely Bethlehem, this night, 

So many weary centuries ago, 

The music, pulsing now across the snow, 

Hung trembling in the raptured air. The light 

Of myriad beating angel -wings, — not bright, 

But throbbing softly, one deep, tremulous glow, — 

Ineffably encrowned the town below. 

Its folk slept on, ears stopped, eyes sealed from sight. 

The hour past. The Virgin's Babe was born. 

The busy townsmen, rising with the day, 

Spake of the cloud, the cold, the wind that blew; 

They saw no glory save that of the morn; 

Nor dreamed that angels came and went away. 

The Babe and Mary and the shepherds knew. 



CHRISTMAS-TIDE 

CHRISTMAS-TIME is here. Frosty, 
happy, hurrying, enthusiastic Christmas- 
time! And we laugh with our friends, 
and give cordial greetings to mere acquaintances, 
and smile at strangers, and, most of all, our hearts 
get warm on the side next the children. We wish 
everybody /'Merry Christmas !" — a phrase that 
grows more sweet with multiplied reiteration. We 
jostle and are jostled in the crowded stores with 
all patience; we push our way through the stormy 
streets with imperturbable good nature; we warm 
our stiffened fingers before the dancing blaze at 
home with much merriment, holding the stalwart 
opinion that this is certainly the best season in the 
whole year. 

True it is, we admit, that every month has hidden 
in its common cargo of days and nights some bit 
of choice freight peculiarly its own. January car- 
ries its bales of bright, new resolutions; February 
holds that queer piece of chronological elastic, by 

41 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

which men accommodate their calculations to the 
unyielding contrariness of Old Sol; March puffs 
his cheeks like a big schoolboy and romps and 
shouts, and then turns in his tracks, still like the 
boy, and gives us pussy-willows; April enjoys her 
quaint birthday so much that she keeps it for 
twenty-nine more with practical jokes of snow and 
hail and shine and shower; May is fragrant in her 
apple-blossoms ; June has her wealth of "rare days" 
and fair brides and sweet girl-graduates; July re- 
verberates with the Glorious Fourth ; August brings 
full freightage of indolence, and we, being very lazy, 
follow Peter's example and go a-fishing — if we can ; 
September overflows with hex harvest-home, the 
fruitage and the vintage of the year; October is 
serenely glorious in her robes of Indian summer; 
November redeems her cold rains and her dreary 
east winds by bringing us the Pilgrim festival. 

Then comes December. The frost pries its way 
through every crack, no less persistent because so 
obviously unwelcome. In the pasture the oaks stand 
stark and gaunt, stiffened by the biting cold; the 
dry weeds at the roadside rattle disconsolately, and 
the snow drifts into the fence-corners and between 
the furrows. A most inhospitable, harsh, and stingy 

42 



CHRISTMAS-TIDE 

old miser of sunshine and gladness were December 
but that he brings us Christmas. This being in- 
dubitably so, we can forgive his bleakness, for it 
is the very fitting background for the fires of Yule- 
tide. Think of Christmas in the midst of April's 
showers or August's blazing heat, or even set among 
the crimson and yellow drifts of October's falling 
leaves ! Wholly out of keeping ! What the holiday 
can be to those unfortunate folk who live south of 
the equator, where the summer comes in the winter- 
time, I really can not quite imagine; but the an- 
cients who guessed the day lived this side the belt 
of the earth, and therefore fixed the festival where 
it belongs — in bleak December. We owe them 
thanks for their nice discrimination. So outside the 
wind howls; the frozen ground rings under the jar- 
ring wheels; the snow drives viciously against the 
hindering glass; the maples crack like rifles as the 
sap freezes in their veins; but inside are the glow- 
ing Christmas hearth, the tree glistening with can- 
dles and tinsel, and the tables bending under their 
abundance. Besides, the home-folks are all there 
gathering about the fire, exclaiming over the tree, 
thrilling with expectation, bursting with secrets, 
and, if it were possible, satiated with the joy of 

43 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

manifested love. Then it is no wonder that we 
at this season forget Athens and Rome and London 
and New York, and think only of little Bethlehem, 
whence Christmas came. 

We love this Bethlehem holiday, as I have in- 
timated, because it is the giving-time of the year. 
Those Wise Men who first celebrated the day were 
unaware that the thing they did in bringing gifts 
to the little Judean village was to be so widely 
imitated. Doers of great deeds are often so. But 
for two thousand years men have been following 
the custom set by the Magi, and of its increase there 
will be no end; for earth would be dreary, indeed, 
without this day, and even heaven, with Christmas 
left out, might well seem a poor exchange for cold 
December with its joyous holiday. These men 
from the East, then, brought gifts and made the 
Christmas-tide a giving time ever since, and so it 
will be, world without end. Let us all say "Amen." 

And folks do give at this glad time of the year. 
With here and there the possible exception of some 
flinty-hearted, pitiable Old Scrooge, we fall into 
a most prodigal generosity, a blessed insanity of 
hilarious giving. Sometimes, indeed, unworthy gift- 
making intrudes itself, being of the flesh but not 

44 



CHRISTMAS-TIDE 

of the spirit of Christmas. Some such presents are 
but for lavish display, which is in exceeding bad 
taste; some are duty-gifts, bought reluctantly, given 
grudgingly, tied in hard knots frowningly, com- 
pounded of hypocrisy and slavish convention; some 
are seed sown thriftily in good ground, from which 
is expected an abundant harvest, thirty, sixty, a hun- 
dred fold — a most contemptible and selfish desecra- 
tion of the day. But go to, now. This is Christ- 
mas. Let these sink into disreputable oblivion, 
which is the only sanitary treatment of such gar- 
bage. So we will turn our thoughts right gladly 
to that other host of gifts, which no man can num- 
ber, that are fragrant with self-forgetful love. 

Fragrant with love — is it not a fitting phrase? 
The far-flung breath of apple-blossoms and of the 
sunset-hued clusters of peach-bloom, the redolence 
of basswoods and of clover-fields thronged with 
bees, the heavy perfume of the queenly rose and of 
the wealthy hyacinth, the delicate, almost ghostly 
fragrance of the gentle violet and the shy arbutus, — 
all these summerfuls of delightsome odors burst 
forth as gifts are untied by fingers that tremble with 
loving expectancy. What matter whether the gift 
be a diamond or a penwiper ! It is anointed, bathed, 

45 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

saturated with love. Whatever its price in the 
sordid market-place, to you it is infinitely precious 
for love's sweet sake. In the homes of the rich 
the stockings are crowded and the tables overflow 
with automobiles that run, and engines that puff, 
and dolls that talk, and jewels that sparkle in ever- 
changing hues, and books bound in morocco. In 
the home of the poor the lean little patched stock- 
ings have in them an apple or two, some raisins and 
nuts, a penny-whistle, and a rag doll. Mother gets 
a handkerchief, and father a book of shaving-paper. 
But these latter in their bare room keep Christmas 
as merrily as their neighbors in the mansion, for in 
both homes is a glory of love whose revealing is not 
limited by the monetary dimensions of a gift. 

But, nevertheless, a real Christmas present must 
be costly. This is a suggestion of worth which 
we may find in the coming of the Wise Men with 
their gifts. Gold they had, and frankincense and 
myrrh in abundance. To give of these meant noth- 
ing of sacrifice to them. They must face the hard- 
ships and the perils of the long journey to the 
throne-room of the Kingly Babe that thus they 
might put something of themselves into their pres- 
ent, for what it bears of the giver is the true heart 

4 6 



CHRISTMAS-TIDE 

of the gift always. That is the reason one turns 
carelessly from the expensive token, which was pur- 
chased easily and given thoughtlessly, to the coarse 
handkerchief with its wavering hem and its stag- 
gering stitches that cost the child who gave it hours 
of loving toil. What our gifts are matters very 
little. What they contain of the giver is of great 
concern. When "our ship comes in" we wfll not 
care much about its rig — whether it be bark or 
schooner or sloop — but we will want to know what 
cargo she bears to us. So let us pray that, when 
our Christmas ships sail into the harbor of this day, 
they may be deep-freighted with the very hearts of 
our friends wrought into a richness of thought and 
labor and sacrifice, for so comes Christmas Day 
to us. Or, if w T e would ask a nobler thing, let us 
entreat the One of Bethlehem for grace through 
which our outbound Yuletide vessels may be loaded 
with a like cargo to the water's edge, for from us 
in such a fashion should Christmas Day go forth. 
Nor will we be unmindful of the sorts of presents 
we bestow. "What shall we give?" is in truth De- 
cember's distinctive question. If, therefore, we 
pause long enough to look at the kinds of gifts 
the Wise Men brought we may find help in an- 

47 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

swering the query. They gave gold, for one thing — 
very practical stuff, and soon to be needed for that 
sudden Egyptian journey. Practical presents, that 
may be used, and used up, in the work and the 
wear of everyday life, have in their giving wisdom 
as well as love. A diamond pin would be of small 
value to a man without a shirt, and a gold ring 
would be a mockery on a hand transparent with 
semi-starvation. The instances may be extreme, but 
such kinds of ill-chosen gifts are common enough. 
We will do well to see that the unsentimental, 
homely thing which is able to lubricate the wheels 
of life is among the presents we give. 

However, the overplus of a virtue may become 
a fault. We need to remember that for one prac- 
tical gift the Wise Men gave two unpractical. 
Some hard-headed, forehanded old Bethlehemite — 
for there must have been such, albeit the village 
was not in New England — may have said, as did 
Judas on a somewhat similar occasion, "To what 
purpose is this waste ? Frankincense and myrrh for 
a carpenter's Son, forsooth!" But what did Mary 
with these two bits of unnecessary luxury? To 
me it is an assured conclusion that long after the 

48 



CHRISTMAS-TIDE 

gold was gone and the imperative need of it for- 
gotten, she kept the other gifts sacredly, often look- 
ing upon their magnificence with joy. So they re- 
mained to her a little rose-garden hidden among the 
bare hills of her poverty till the day of His burial. 
Then, at the last, as she sadly thought, no other 
ointment or spice could serve so well for the body 
of her Son as these into which had been wrought 
the dreams and the memories of thirty years. So 
to-day it may be that a bit of luxury, a gift to be 
kept, not worn out, will let much sunshine into some 
gray life, being treasured through many years, till 
at the last it prove indispensable in a vast emergency. 
At Christmas-time, then, loving wisdom remembers 
that there are hearts hungering after a scrap of 
brightness for which there is no stern exigency, and 
it permits them to taste for once the joy of the 
unnecessary. With the gold we will give a little 
frankincense and myrrh. 

Withal we should bear well in mind that the 
real gift is not the tangible thing that passes from 
hand to hand. That is but the symbol, the rough, 
worthless shell. And if we see only the shell at 
this season, then we are alms-givers and alms-takers, 

49 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

nor have we found our Christmas Day. The fra- 
grance of which I have spoken, the deep heart- 
message, the soul of the token — these constitute the 
real gift, and therein is the tender glory of Christ- 
mas. What, then, of the gold, the frankincense, 
the myrrh? Leaving the givers out of mind, these 
are the messages of the gifts concerning the soul of 
our Yuletide. The gold tells us that a loyalty which 
shall abide untarnished till death and beyond, that 
an unenvious well-wishing that is ever ready to be- 
come well-doing, are gifts altogether worthy the 
Christmas-time. The frankincense, reminding us 
of temples and smoking censers and chanted wor- 
ship, tells of the high honor in which we hold these 
friends of ours, the strong and solemn beauties of 
character which our hearts desire for them, and the 
prayers that rise year-long from our lips that so 

they may be 

"every way, 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 

The myrrh is just our love, an ethereal ointment 
gently soothing sore hearts, odorous with the sweet 
forgiveness of faults and sins, belonging most of 
all to the solemn hours of great events, and so 

50 



CHRISTMAS-TIDE 

builded into the very foundations of life. Choice 
presents are these so far transcending their sym- 
bols that we are well-nigh unmindful of the ma- 
terial gift, the mere wooden casket, while we look 
with glad eyes on the precious jewels of good wishes 
and loyalty, of honor and prayers, of tender, heal- 
ing love. 

But would you know the best of all? Then 
listen! The Wise Men brought gifts — let us say 
it very quietly and briefly as men tell the supremest 
happenings of life — they brought gifts to the Christ. 
And — we must whisper it for our great gladness — 
so may we. To Him who gives so lavishly and 
lovingly of His gold and frankincense and myrrh, 
with their infinitely various significance; to Him 
who is so awful in His supreme holiness that we 
worship Him as God, yet so simple in His loving- 
kindness that we talk with Him as with a familiar 
friend; to Him, so persuasive in His perfect sym- 
metry and in His boundless love that He has made 
the cross — a shameful instrument of ignominious 
death — into The Cross, the badge of all high honor 
— we may give gifts to Him. And He uses, He 
needs, the gold of our service, the frankincense of 

5i 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

our worship, the myrrh of our charity. Still more, 
He rejoices in the loyalty and the honor and the 
love that we lay at His feet on this birthday of 
His, the day which we have made our great festival 
of giving and of joy. Sing, my heart, for this best 
of the blessed Christmas-tide! 



5* 



EASTER MIRACLES 



GOD'S GUEST 
" He has gone to be a guest of God." 

The house has been so empty since he went, 
The whole wide world of work and play 
So vacant seems and lonesome since — 
He went away. 

I can not find content. 
For, if I work, my heart will stray 
Past idle hands and task undone 
Back to the happy labor of that day 
Ere he had gone. 

And, if I smile, 
Beguiled by music or the sound 
Of merry voices mixed in mirth, 
My lonely heart aches hard the while, 
For I remember on the whole round earth 
He is not found. 

"Gone," did some one say, 
"To be a guest?" Before he went away, 
It was a joy to him to be a guest — 
Or host: it mattered not at all, 
If but his smile and merry jest 
Found answer in the kindling face 
Of host or guest. 

55 



So, if the call 
That drew him hence and left me sad 
Has only led him to some gracious place 
Of friendliness, where one shall smile and take 
His hand with welcome warm, I shall be glad, 
Just for his sake. 

But in my heart I know 
That in the genial warmth he misses me ; 
That with each rustling welcome at the door 
He turns with eager, wistful glance to see 
If I am come. So I will weep no more 
Until I go. 

For sometime I shall go 
To be a guest with him. But where? 
I had not thought save just to be with him, 
To hear his voice, to touch his hand, and there, 
Somewhere beyond life's sunset rim, 
To be with him. 

"God's guest!" Why, so 
Will be great joy to him. For he 
Loved God. "God's guest!" I can not weep. 
For now I know he did not die, 
He is not dead. He fell asleep — 
He was so tired, and he longed for rest — 
And, when he wakened by and by, 
He was God's guest. 

Smiles after tears 
Shine out. Some glad day I shall see 
His face, and He will be through all the years 
God's guest — with me. 



56 



EASTER MIRACLES 

IT is Easter-time, and miracles abound. Mir- 
acles, I said, and with somewhat of delibera- 
tion; for, if we will but open our eyes, the 
superabundance of the miraculous will press upon 
us till we see not one burning bush, but every com- 
mon thing radiant with the presence of God. It 
will be very well if to our unsealed vision the pass- 
ing day with all its ordinary freight be dignified by 
this august presence of the Almighty. It will prove 
far better if, through continued indwelling and 
abiding, the secret places of God and the shadow 
of the Almighty become very familiar to us. 

With Divine appropriateness the Easter-tide 
comes in the springtime. The age-old prophecy 
and symbol of the resurrection is spring. To people 
who think and feel the vernal renewal of the pulse 
of life never becomes commonplace. Always there 
abides in it a wonder that grows rather than di- 
minishes with its repetition. We have so little to 
do in the matter, save to stand and look, that even 
our garden-hoes seem to be transformed into awk- 

57 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

ward but very mighty wands, and we become ma- 
gicians than which there are no greater. For, see: 
we only stir the ground and drop into it little round 
pellets or light-pointed shells with a mystery of life 
in the heart of each, or big flat seeds or bulbs or 
tubers; and then, by and by, out of the damp earth, 
warmed with the sunshine of April, comes a bit of 
green that reaches upward and spreads outward into 
a blade or a leaf after its kind. So forth from its 
tiny house bursts the plant, stem and leaf and flower 
and fruit and seed again. We wonder unspeakably 
that it all could have been crowded with such in- 
credible compactness into so small a compass. We 
marvel at the impulse and the power revealed in 
its unrolling. We are amazed that the rootlets 
should so unerringly seek the depths, while the blade 
turns to the heights. The fashion in which the 
destiny wrought into the seed leaps, at the caress 
of the rain and the kiss of the sun, into the formal 
expression of parental likeness is to us a continual 
mystery of mysteries. This alchemy of growth, 
when we stop to think of it, makes us look about 
our quite ordinary garden whispering with the awe 
that Jacob knew, " Surely, God is in this place, 
and I knew it not." 

58 



EASTER MIRACLES 

Nor is the Miracle of Spring exhausted in its fun- 
damental fact of stirring life. The multitudinous 
variety of this life is in itself a miracle. The same 
soil hides the roots, the same water moistens their 
thirsty mouths, the same breeze kisses the leaves 
of an infinitely varied host of growing things. 
There, at the foot of the hill, a great oak lifts its 
sturdy boughs over the tender grass, the tufted moss, 
the yellow adder's-tongue, the timid violet, the 
faintly-perfumed hepatica, and the blue, white, and 
pink-blossomed mayflower. At one edge of the 
sweep of its branches the buttercup shines in its 
yellow enamel on the brink of the pool, while at 
the other, under the clump of little pines, a leathern- 
leaved, waxen-belled arbutus hides shyly away. Be- 
yond this crowd of differences lies the great world 
of rooted things that grow — from the mighty Cali- 
fornia redwood to its miniature, the mare's-tail, in 
the barren spots. So limited is the genius of man 
that he must needs stamp his signature on his work 
in certain fashions of doing. The picture, the 
symphony, the poem, the story, the oration, every 
bit of handiwork has in it a certain individuality, 
a kind of likeness to all other work coming from 
the mind or the hand of the same worker. But 

59 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

in this God is vastly different. His work has ever 
in it an infinite variety. In color, in form, in size, 
in relation the manifested thoughts of God in their 
manifold differences indicate the inexhaustible re- 
sources of the Divine genius. And this is no small 
part of the Miracle of Spring. 

But the greatest wonder of Spring is that it should 
stir us to wonder at all. Why should we not be 
unconscious of its mystery and of its significance? 
Who are we, that we set ourselves up to be critics, 
albeit favorable ones, of the ways and the works of 
the Most High? Is it not, indeed, a sign of a 
noble past and a nobler future that we are at all 
aware of the distances of those unexplored regions 
out of which every blade of meadow grass, every 
leaf of forest tree, every friendly roadside flower 
calls to us so alluringly in the springtime? That 
we can wonder shows that our ignorance is super- 
ficial, of our infancy, not of our mature nature e 
So, while we rejoice in the wine of spring sunshine 
and stand in silent awe before its miracle of re- 
newed life and lose ourselves in wonder at the 
deeper meanings that beckon to us from the doors 
of its mysteries, we are amazed most of all that 
we are able to marvel at this whole primeval Mir- 

60 



EASTER MIRACLES 

acle of the Easter-tide. We somehow feel that the 
physical in Spring is permeated with a vaster spir- 
itual. Lowell sets this chord throbbing in our 
souls by his suggestion in his well-known verse that 
the activities of Spring are to be predicated not of 
things, but of a person. With him we project into 
the very clod this music of the spiritual that trembles 
in our souls. 

"Whether we look or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur or see it glisten; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in the grass and the flowers.' , 

Softly the overtones of that music whisper to us 
wondrous things about a divinity that dwells in 
ourselves and is part of us. So death loses its grim- 
ness and the grave its hopelessness and the future 
its barren blankness, and so, not by any hard-built 
logic, but by the sweet persuasions and the warm 
assurances that blossom with the violets and the 
daffodils as bright and rich as they, do we catch 
some glimpse of the life that waits us just past our 
rainy vernal equinox. At this Easter-tide, then, we 
will thank God for the Miracle of the Spring. 

61 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

The second marvel of Easter is the Miracle of 
the Garden. There happened that supernatural 
event which, seen in the perspective of the centuries, 
seems the only natural sequence of the preceding 
life. But I will not at this time speak of the pri- 
mary fact of the Resurrection, but rather of its evi- 
dences in the words and deeds of those who were 
immediately touched by it, for every truth comes 
into our knowledge through its relations to tangible 
facts. We know the coming of spring through the 
grass and the flowers; we know love through 
caresses and sacrifices; we know conversion through 
the changed face and the reformed life; we know 
the Resurrection through the words and deeds and 
lives that flowed forth from it like streams which 
come out of a fountain in the desert and make fruit- 
ful fields in the midst of a wilderness. 

First of all, then — that we may be done with it 
and turn to things more pleasing — is the proof of the 
miracle in its denial. The incredible explanations 
of the alleged consequences of a fact in question 
offered by those who deny it, are often the best evi- 
dences of its truth. Thrust this question at your 
wise, superior skeptic, "If this, which is undeniable, 
be not caused by that which you deny, then, in your 

62 



EASTER MIRACLES 

turn, tell me its real cause." While he flounders 
in the superstitions of science, falsely so called, your 
own faith will be strengthened. When the soldiers 
at the tomb must give an account for the absence 
of the body that they were set to guard, they, taught 
by the priests, said, "His disciples came by night, 
while we slept, and stole it away." These were 
Roman soldiers, inured to all the hardships of war, 
and yet, without being exhausted by marching or 
fighting, they slept. They were under the severest 
military discipline, still they brought upon them- 
selves the sentence of death because they slept. 
There were at least two on guard, but they both 
slept at the same time. On an unusual duty, in 
the fearful precincts of a graveyard, watching 
against the fulfillment of a startling prophecy, they 
slept. And while they slept they saw the disciples 
come and take away the body ! What better proof 
of the Resurrection do we ask than this absurdity 
of explanation on the part of those who were set 
to guard against any imposture? And those who 
through the centuries have tried to explain Easter 
away have succeeded only in multiplying incredi- 
bilities. They have turned from a mystery of un- 
fathomed power, like which there are many about 

63 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

us, to a contradictory mass of intellectual confusion. 
It may be possible that to these an atrophy of in- 
tellect in this particular has happened, so that they 
are become incapable of perceiving this truth or its 
evidence, but for the rest of us Easter Day abides. 
In this composite Miracle of the Garden there 
are those other sweeter wonders. There was the 
healing of the broken hearts, and I think that our 
Comrade would like us to put that first, as He did. 
Mary came into the garden through the misty dawn, 
seeking where they had laid her Lord, in order that 
she might show to His poor, wounded body, now 
mercifully free from the thorn-crown and the nails, 
those last tokens of love which men so pathetically 
bestow on the abandoned tenements of their beloved. 
So she came to the tomb, and it was empty. Not 
content to crucify her Master, they must now bear 
His precious body away from her care to what 
humiliation she knew not. So she thought, in heart- 
broken fashion. It was not the mist of the morning 
that blinded her eyes when One approached who, 
she thought, was the gardener. Through her tears 
she lifted up her pitiful cry, " Where have you laid 
Him?" The single word "Mary" was the elo- 
quent reply, and, brushing away her tears, she 

64 



EASTER MIRACLES 

looked up and knew Him, and fell in loving wor- 
ship at His feet. With sobs and laughter mingled 
she cried, "My Master!" But for His restraint, 
she would have kissed the wounds in His feet which 
the ragged spike had made. The rains were over 
and gone, and the time of the singing of birds was 
come in the heart of Mary. She, who went into 
the garden weeping under the shadow of the pas- 
sion, came out rejoicing in the glory of the first 
Easter. 

Another broken heart was healed at no great 
time later. Peter, notwithstanding all his honors 
and service and boasting, had denied the Christ in 
the most aggravated manner, in spite of warnings — 
openly, repeatedly, angrily denied Him. Since 
that unhappy hour shame had been eating at his 
heart. If only he could have the opportunity to 
say to Him, "I am sorry," to ask His forgiveness, 
to do before Him some heroic deed, and so prove 
his repentance and renewed loyalty. But now it 
was too late ; for that beloved Friend was dead and, 
whatever others might do for Him, he who had 
been one of the inner circle must stand forever 
outside; his name must be coupled with that of 
Judas. Then somewhere on that Easter day, in 
5 65 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

a place too hallowed to be named, Jesus came to 
him, and with words too sacred ever to be repeated 
his dear Master gave him the assurance of forgive- 
ness. Into the room where the others were gathered 
burst Peter out of the blackness of his midnight, 
wearing a radiant morning face and shouting with 
jubilation: "I have seen Him! I have seen Him!" 
In such a blessed fashion Peter found his Easter; 
for what other than a resurrection could have 
brought peace and joy to the shamed heart of this 
fisherman ? 

Then there was the wonder of doubt leaping into 
faith. Easter brimmed over the edge of the Garden, 
flowed into the Upper Room, and found Thomas 
there. Now, Thomas was a constitutional skeptic, 
a man who always insisted on the margin of proof, 
a kind of Galilean Scotchman. Mary's shining face 
did not convince him; the story of the women and 
the message from the angels did not lead him into 
belief; Peter's glory of soul was not sufficient evi- 
dence. He must see Him, put his fingers into the 
prints of the nails, his hand into the wounded side 
before he would believe. To him, then, came the 
Christ ; the pierced palms extended and the wounded 
side uncovered were open to his test, and with one 

66 



EASTER MIRACLES 

bound he sprang from the dull hopelessness of "I 
will not believe" into the joyous faith of "My 
Lord and my God!" So came Easter to Thomas. 
Nor may we forget the wonderful transformation 
of the fear which hid behind locked doors into the 
courage which boldly charged the rulers of the 
nation with murder and trembled not at death. 
The disciples expected much of Jesus in their 
blind, material way. Even when the dangers 
thickened and His enemies crowded Him toward 
the hill, notwithstanding His positive words of 
warning and His evident agony, they still were so 
sure that it was just the hour before dawn that, in 
Gethsemane itself, the inner circle yielded to sleep. 
Then He was seized, and they fled ; He was con- 
demned, and no angels came to His rescue ; He was 
crucified, and though the heavens and the earth 
were moved at the tragedy, yet He died, and the 
disciples themselves laid Him in Joseph's new tomb. 
From the height of their boundless expectations they 
fell confusedly to the depths of utter discourage- 
ment. "They trusted" — observe the past tense, as 
of hope ended — "that He had been the one to re- 
store the kingdom to Israel." In their bewilder- 
ment they hid themselves in a locked room till they 

67 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

might safely slip out of the city and find their way 
back to the dullness of the old life now so sadly 
empty since they had known Him. Then came 
Easter and the forty days' communion and the 
dynamic of the Spirit. So they went forth, facing 
all ridicule and hatred and persecution and martyr- 
dom, courageously declaring the truth, which burned 
its way out of their hearts, that this same Jesus 
whom the leaders of the people had crucified was 
risen from the dead, and so was the Messiah. They 
did not assert His resurrection because of His Mes- 
siahship, but His Messiahship because of His resur- 
rection. This was their continual message: "And 
the third day He rose from the dead. Must not 
this Jesus, then, be the Christ of God ?" This glad 
news drove them through all the land proclaiming 
the miracle of Easter as the very heart of their 
evangel till, one by one, they fell asleep in Him. 
No adequate motive for such hardy boldness, such 
joyous sacrifice, can be found save in the fact of 
the resurrection. So grief became joy, and the lash- 
ings of a guilty conscience gave way to a surpassing 
peace, and doubt was lost in high faith, and trem- 
bling timidity was transformed into armed courage. 

68 



EASTER MIRACLES 

These glories interwoven became the Miracle of the 
Garden at Easter time. 

Not least in wonder among these marvels is the 
Easter Miracle of Words. Now, a word is the 
crystallized essence of many experiences. This is 
emphatically true of the great terms in our speech. 
To the landsman who has never caught the wind 
fresh off the wide water the word "sea" means 
little more than an extended duckpond, but to the 
sailor the term is a symbol of varied and wonder- 
ful experiences. There is in it a panorama of 
motion, from the sparkling dance of the ripples and 
the long, lazy lift of the swell to the headlong 
rush of huge billows, whipped with flying spray, 
and the tumbling cascades of breakers tripping on 
the bars in their haste to reach the shore and falling 
into thunder and foam. In it there runs back and 
forth a riot of color from the blackness of the mid- 
night water through the grays and greens and blues 
and purples of dawn and noon and twilight to the 
silvery sheen that the moon makes on the calm sea 
and to the white ghost on the crests of fleeing waves. 
A multitude of voices hide for him in the word, 

69 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

from the whisperings of the breeze-ruffled ocean to 
the calling of strong winds and the shouting of bois- 
terous seas as they romp together. It becomes ob- 
vious that a great word without an adequate reality 
back of it is a sign lacking significance, an imple- 
ment without a use, an effect without a cause. 

We use not a few words into which Easter has 
poured a vastly larger meaning. They have been 
transmuted into gold by its alchemy. Among them 
are the radiant symbols: hope, faith, assurance, im- 
mortality, heaven, love, loyalty, comradeship. Of 
these I will not speak, but rather of two others 
which through the generations stood opposed, each 
to each, in unremitting battle till Easter made them 
allies, the one mightier through the ages becoming 
the servant of the weaker. Life and death yield 
themselves to the peaceful sunshine of Easter. 

We do well to consider the wonder for a little. 
From the day on which Cain stood looking down 
on the bruised and breathless body of his brother 
lying unmoved by all the world about him and 
impotent to so much as bend a grass-blade, until 
the first Easter, there abode in the heart of man a 
sense of the terrifying antithesis between life and 
death. Here about him lay the sunny highland of 

70 



EASTER MIRACLES 

life with its bright activities and enjoyments, its 
self-consciousness, and its warm familiarity. There, 
somewhere, unseen until its brink crumbled beneath 
his feet, waited the black chasm of death, and be- 
yond it nothing, or dreams of weird and fearful 
experiences, a place of shadows and of uncertainties. 
Job could be sure of nothing more than rest from 
the multiplied woes of his trial, and the psalmist 
wrote, "The dead praise not the Lord, neither do 
any that go down into the darkness." The ancient 
preacher exclaimed of life when the shadow of 
death fell upon it: "Vanity of vanities! All is 
vanity !" The Greeks made their deity of death 
altogether terrible with hour-glass and scythe, wait- 
ing to cut down inexorably him whose sand should 
next run out. The Romans wrote oh their tombs, 
"Farewell, farewell; forever farewell!" The 
African woman, weeping in the bush, wailed out 
her despair to the kindly bishop who found her 
there: "My baby is dead, and I will never see it 
again!" So the day of life was ever shadowed with 
the ominous night of death. 

Then came Easter. We thought life a lane 
ending yonder at the grave; but now we know 
that it is a great highway sweeping round the 

71 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

bend called death, and ever on and on. We thought 
it a land-locked lake; but now we see that it is 
a bay and flows through an unseen channel round 
the end of what seemed its farther shore into the 
vast ocean. We thought the whole home of man 
was in this one little, frail hut; but we learn now 
that this body is but the lodge at the gate, and be- 
yond, in our Father's Paradise, are many palaces. 
The Easter sunshine has not only boundlessly in- 
creased our measure of life, but has greatly en- 
riched its quality, for by it divinity is wrought into 
its fabric. It multiplies life's meanings as we see 
the years which we now have woven into the cen- 
turies that await us. Thus does life become very 
august, since it is a time of beginnings, of choosing 
directions, of determining destinies; and it becomes 
very glorious, for all its activities are allied with 
the work of God. When the radiance of the empty 
tomb shone upon Death, that huge, spectral event, 
draped with black robes of horror and of woe, 
dwindled to the dimensions of an incident. It be- 
came a turn in the road, the first hurdle in the 
race, the door into the other room, a night's sleep, 
a crossing of a stream, a change of garments. Paul 
answers Job, "It is better to be absent from the 

72 



EASTER MIRACLES 

body and present with the Lord." Over against 
the darkness and the silence of the grave in the 
wail of the psalmist stands the apostle's triumphant 
cry, "O Grave, where is thy victory?" To the 
preacher of pessimism, John the seer makes reply, 
"They shall bring the glory and the honor of the 
nations into it," and, "There shall be no night 
there." The Greek god of death is replaced by 
the shining angels whom the women saw at Joseph's 
tomb. Opposite the Roman inscription is carved 
the Christian, "In Christ, in peace, in hope." And 
when the good bishop told the woman in the jungle 
the story of Easter, she laid her babe in the earth 
with a glad hope shining through her tears. In- 
stead of weird, grief-laden dirges wailed over the 
graves of our loved ones, we chant triumphantly: 
"I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that be- 
lieveth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
live;" and then we sing softly, "Asleep in Jesus, 
blessed sleep." Dr. Babcock reveals very beauti- 
fully the overthrow of black death by shining Easter 
in his lines: 

"Why be afraid of death, as though your life were breath? 
Death but anoints your eyes with clay. O glad surprise! 
Why should you be forlorn? Death only husks the corn. 
Why should you fear to meet the thresher of the wheat? 

73 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

Is sleep a thing to dread? Yet sleeping you are dead, 
Until you wake and rise here or beyond the skies. 
Why should it be a wrench to leave your wooden bench? 
Why not with happy shout run home when school is out? 
The dear ones left behind? O foolish. one and blind! 
A day and you will meet — a night and you will greet. 
This is the death of death, to breathe away a breath 
And know the end of strife and taste the deathless life 
And joy without a fear and smile without a tear 
And work nor care to rest and find the last the best." 

As the Christ on the Excellent Mount was trans- 
figured until even His garments became like woven 
sunbeams, so in the Garden Life becomes celestial 
in new meanings and Death appears as the tall 
angel of God clad in robes of glory. These words 
in this miracle of their transformation show how 
large a place Easter has made for itself in our 
speech. 

How shall we tell in few words the Miracle of 
Easter in the lives of men and in the life of the 
world ? Napoleon once, in an hour of insight, said : 
"Alexander, Charlemagne, and I have founded em- 
pires. But on what have we built the creations of 
our genius? On sheer force. Jesus alone has 
founded His empire on love, and to-night millions 
would die for Him." This utterance of the great 

74 



EASTER MIRACLES 

Corsican is deeply true, but it does not compass 
the whole truth. It does, however, suggest it. Men 
may willingly sacrifice their lives for the living, 
but they do not die for the dead. They may believe 
the precepts of Socrates, honor the morality of 
Marcus Aurelius, feel their hearts warmed into love 
by the sweet and sturdy simplicity of Abraham Lin- 
coln; but none are ready to die that the stories of 
these lives should be spread throughout the whole 
world; few would choose martyrdom rather than 
disloyalty to the names of any of these men. But 
because Easter came into the Garden, and because 
men realize that the Christ of Galilee and of Cal- 
vary still lives as tender and as strong as ever, they 
are ready to lay down their lives for Him. To 
all His martyrs He is the living Friend to whom 
they must in no manner be untrue. He is our Cap- 
tain, and Him we love, to Him we will be loyal, 
and for Him, if need be, we will even dare to die; 
for, "Lo, He is with us alway." 

Men die for Him and, more wonderful still, 
they live for Him. Not in the exaltation of a 
supreme deed of sacrifice done once for all, not in 
sudden flaming courage of an hour, but in the steady 
strain of a constant battle stretching wearily through 

75 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

the years, in the continual repetition of small sac- 
rifices, in the dull obscurity of daily routine men 
and women are forgetting themselves in their love 
and devotion to Him. Their abiding patience, their 
unwavering loyalty, their unabating zeal manifest 
the radiance of a devotion not to one who lived 
and is dead, but to a supremer One, who lives for 
evermore. Nor are these who thus live for Him 
weak creatures with a preponderance of untrained 
imagination. They are men of will and mind and 
power. Some one has said: "Do you ask if Jesus 
Christ is a strong man? See the strong men He 
has conquered. " Men of primal strength, like 
blind Samson, chained to heartless drudgery and 
prisoned in unlovely surroundings, and there, with 
brawny arms and rough hands, doing the world's 
harsh work, crude and hard and mighty, have found 
in His fellowship and service a Bethel ladder down 
which come into their lives angels of a very genuine 
refinement, of high ideals, and of true nobility. 
Such a conquest is not the victory of a mere name, 
but of One that lives. It is a Miracle of Easter. 
With these are the favored ones of earth: men 
whose days are filled with pleasant tasks, who are 
environed with comfort and with beauty, to whom 

76 



EASTER MIRACLES 

in fullest measure come the privileges of this life. 
Such men, lifted out of themselves by the vision 
of His face, find in His service their supremest joy 
and go gladly along the ways of men, following His 
steps of toil and sacrifice and bearing something of 
His compassion. Who but a living Master could 
thus command them from their feasts and their 
pleasures ? 

Beside them are men who know the higher joy 
of doing great deeds: masters of art and of science, 
kings of statecraft and captains of industry, strong 
men, Sauls who stand head and shoulders above 
their fellows. These bow the knee of homage full 
willingly to the Carpenter and pledge themselves 
His vassals with their strong hands between His 
pierced palms. The power of a risen Lord of men 
masters them. 

Do we ask if Jesus is a strong man? See the 
weak men whom He has made strong. The fact 
of conversion laughs to scorn all psychology that 
makes no account of it; for here we find a man 
born of evil parentage and so turned squarely to- 
ward ruin by heredity. He is reared in the under- 
world and so hurried on his way to destruction by 
environment. Half his life is spent in vice and 

77 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

crime, and thus he is fettered by the might of habit 
to a hopeless destiny. All the precepts of wise 
moralists, all the warnings of stern prophets, all 
the high ideals of pure-hearted saints are but straws 
to him, caught in the turbulent current of his life. 
But one day this man of sin calls on the name of 
Jesus, and his heritage of evil and his education 
of sin and his practice of vice become but threads 
of tow to the mighty power that bursts into his life. 
He is converted, transformed, glorified. Nor is this 
change merely apparent, a passing ecstasy, a will- 
o'-the-wisp glittering illusively for a moment over 
the morass of his hopelessness. He finds himself 
living a new life in the strength of Jesus Christ. 
Beside such a resurrection of a soul and such an 
abiding of spiritual life the rising of a dead body 
to fullness of physical life is an incident not spe- 
cially worthy of note. But many such wrecks, 
stranded on the shoals of sin, grinding on the reefs 
of vice, caught in the maelstroms of moral ruin, 
have been saved by Him and brought into the calm, 
deep channels of life. These never question the 
Resurrection. They know the Easter in the Gar- 
den by the more wonderful Easter in their hearts. 
This is a Christian civilization because the evan- 

78 



EASTER MIRACLES 

gel of Christ so largely determines the standards of 
morality, furnishes the high ideals, and reveals the 
satisfying hopes that persist in it. This message 
finds its way into society at large, fundamentally, 
through the preaching and teaching and singing of 
the Church. We may give the fullest credit to 
all those other institutions that are extending and 
applying the word; yet it remains undeniably true 
that the Church is the great power-house of our 
civilization. But the dynamo of the Church is 
Easter Day. If it were conclusively shown that 
Jesus did not arise from the dead, the whole fabric 
of the Church would come crashing about our ears. 
Its form might for a little time continue as the 
shape of a burned bit of wood sometimes still shows 
in the ashes; but the Church so left without its 
Easter would be but ashes, to dissolve at a touch. 
A dead Master would not be able to command our 
lives with supreme authority, nor could He save 
us from our sins, nor would His promise of the 
life to come be convincing, nor could such a one 
by any means be a supremely inspirational example. 
Then would come to pass the hopeless alternative 
of the apostle's thought: "But if Christ hath not 
been raised, then is our preaching vain and your 

79 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

faith is also vain. Then they, also, who have fallen 
asleep in Christ have perished. " If He be not 
risen, there is no glad news to tell, no victorious 
King to crown, no living Comrade to love. He 
can only be remembered by the few as a Man too 
good for His generation, and so crucified; a teacher 
whose doctrines failed the ultimate test of experi- 
ment; a dreamer of beauteous dreams — but only a 
dreamer. In such a case our civilization could be 
Christian neither in name nor in distinctive char- 
acteristics. The marvelous leavening power of 
Jesus in society is not the waning influence of one 
who failed, an innocent victim of death; but the 
waxing power of One who succeeds, death's con- 
queror. Our Christian civilization is an unques- 
tionable Miracle of Easter. 

The constant Miracle of Spring was the prophecy 
of the Easter that was to be, and is the symbol of 
the Easter that has been and is forever. The 
miracle of gladness in the faces of Mary and Peter, 
in the triumphant shout of Thomas, in the boldness 
of the reanimated disciples, finds its only possible 
source in Easter. The miracle wrought in our 
common speech, by which the black god of death 

So 



EASTER MIRACLES 

has been transformed into the white-robed, fair- 
faced angel of our Father come to lead us into one 
of His other rooms, and by which the monosyllable 
"life" was made to stand for infinite meanings, 
must find its philosophy in the dawn of that day 
which brought fear to the soldiers and glory to 
the hearts of Jesus' friends. The manysided miracle 
in the lives of men and in the life of man can 
find no adequate account of itself save in the Risen 
One. 



81 



"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 



OUT ON THE RANGE 

Jim's girl — 
For I saw her, you know, 
Twice, only twice, in the long ago- 
Had a single, willful, shining curl 
That never would stay 
With the rest, as it ought, 
But rippled apart. 
So it chanced one day, 
As he was recklessly galloping down 
The long, gray trail, in its coil it caught 
And held Jim's heart. 
For out on the range, they say, 
Folks fall in love in the same strange way 
That they do in town. 

A lazy breeze that wonderful day 

Had just slipped down from the blue-veiled hills 

And loitered along in a careless way, 

Whispering over old memories: 

Sometimes about great solemn trees; 

Sometimes of the silent dusk that fills 

The higher canons; of drifts that weep, 

Lonesome for comfort, till up from their sleep 

Flowers come star-eyed; of sage-covered slopes 

Lifting prayers all pungent with desperate hopes — 

As of those who ever fight hard against odds — 

To the cloud-bannered peaks where the wilderness gods 

Dwell ever under a sky-roof blue. 

85 



The breeze kissed the curl. 
Then Jim leaped down 
And, standing there by her horse's side — 
The valley lay quiet, empty, and wide — 
She stooped a bit and — he kissed the girl. 
And what would you have him do? 
For folks on the range, they say, 
Tell their love in the same dear way 
That they do in town. 

The breeze wandered away, 

The days drifted past, 

And each one seemed to out-brim the last 

With a strange, new joy to Jim. 

A tender glory each hour lay 

On the lava black and the sage-brush gray 

And crowned the hilltops far away; 

So he sang, for the world was fair to him. 

Then a messenger came, hot with desperate speed; 

One word, and Jim was up and away. 

The long trail, narrow, sinuous, gray, 

Leaped swiftly back from his horse's feet — ■ 

It was life or death Jim rode to meet. 

He knew the hot pace, but he seemed to creep, 

For his heart's thick pulsing measured each leap 

That brought him nearer her uttermost need. 

The day was dark when he stood by her side; 

Gloom filled the canons, the valley wide 

Mourned in shadows, the breeze was still. 

On the white forehead the golden curl 

Lay unshaken. Jim bent down 

And tenderly kissed the silent girl. 

He sobbed as sometimes rough men will ; 

For out on the range, they say, 

Death comes in the same relentless way 

That it does in town. 

86 



Now Jim rides slow 
Over the hills as the years pass by. 
The trail and the sage and the arch of the sky 
Change not. But each year finds Jim 
Riding slower and slower yet, 
Silent and stern, with mouth grim set; 
For a grave in the valley down below 
Holds all in the world that is dear to him; 
For out on the range, they say, 
Men's hearts break in as bitter a way 
As they break in town. 



87 



"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 

ABOUT each of our commoner flowers are 
clustered the memories of its own day. 
L Lilies hold Easter for their peculiar pos- 
session; carnations suggest the congratulatory bustle 
of graduations; roses recall old banquets or, it may 
be, the dewy twilights in which were said those 
first love-vows which seem now so foolish and so 
precious; the queenly plumes of goldenrod tell of 
harvest festivals. But the lilacs, in their white or 
lavender masses, with their heavy perfume, bring 
to our saddened eyes visions of Memorial Day. 
Likewise each holiday has its distinctive form and 
color in our thought. The Fourth of July is 
boisterous with effervescent patriotism; Thanks- 
giving has in it the firelight of home-comings and 
the greetings of love; Christmas is full to the brim 
and running over with all manner of dancing ex- 
pectations and laughing surprises; there is about 
New Year's Day a sense of newness — as if it had 

89 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

rained hard over night and the air had been washed 
clean; the glory of heavenly hopes and the vast 
surging of eternal life breaks Easter into splendid 
fragments of wonder. But the breath of the lilacs 
quiets our laughter and halts our hurrying activities 
and makes our hearts tender with a sad yearning 
that is not all painful. We stand still for an hour 
and look back wistfully over the way we have come. 
We remember the other days and the faces now 
gone from among men, and we sigh 

For the touch of a vanished hand 
And the sound of a voice that is still." 

The others, perhaps, are holidays. Memorial Day 
is a holy day. Its hours are sacred, each one a great 
translucent pearl, because once it was filled to over- 
flowing with tears. They have ceased, for they fell, 
it may be, long ago; but we have not forgotten, 
and the hours are all richly gray with the soft sheen 
of old sad memories. It is a holy day, and a halo of 
purity and of worthiness is about it, and a certain 
majesty, for we are thinking of those who have 
passed from the dust and the murk of our sin- 
touched life into a cleaner air; we are remembering 
those who have received the coronation of death. 

90 



"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 

Heavenly visitors seem to stand just outside the too 
palpable veil of the flesh, and 

"Angel-faces smile, 
Which we have loved long since, and lost awhile." 

Being such a day, if we have any sense of the 
fitness of things, we do not try to reason about it 
or its contents. That were to err, to desecrate the 
day, to show far too plainly our kinship to the 
insensate clod. We must look and feel and re- 
member and meditate and dream and see visions 
and invite the Presence of God. And, if you weary 
not, you and I will do just this for a little time 
this Memorial Day, with the breath of the lilacs 
about us: we will cast aside all dull reasonings and 
bid logic be gone ; we will just look and, perchance, 
see; open our hearts and, it may be, feel the deeper 
movings of life ; lift up the gates of our souls, and 
who knows but God will come in? If this be so, 
then will the fragrance of the lilacs be precious to 
us and the day be very holy for evermore. 

Far down the street rolls the sudden rattle of 
the snare-drum, then the boom of the bass-drum, 
and in an instant the whole band pours out its 
9i 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

mingled harmonies, all wrought into stirring but 
solemn martial music. The magic of the trumpet- 
call and the drum-beat lays its mighty hand upon 
us. We look about and long for some heroic thing 
to do. So we somewhat understand how men on 
hard marches or in the horror of battle forget them- 
selves in the beating glory of such strains, but we 
are more mystified than ever why this should be. 
The music swells, the musicians march briskly 
along, conscious of the watching eyes and the listen- 
ing ears and rejoicing in the gladness that always 
attends the doing of a thing by the harmonious 
massing of various individual activities. We re- 
member that God made us " workmen together.' ' 
The warmth of a great comradeship glows in our 
hearts, and we highly resolve that henceforth we will 
call men brothers a little more significantly ; that we 
will do our small tasks with a bit more care; that 
we will cause no discord in the splendid harmony 
of the world's work. With a sudden lift, as though 
on a mighty surge of recollection, we recall that 
God said we were to be workers with Him. That 
is too wonderful. Our very faces glow with the 
marvel of it. Our poor strains are to be wrought, 
not into the melodies of the world alone, but into 

92 



"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 

the infinite music of the universe. We no longer 
wish for the chance to do a great deed. The com- 
mon chores of everyday are become very great since 
we touch shoulders with God in their doing. We 
no more look for the heroic things to do, but are 
determined now to do the common thing heroically. 
But the band is past, and we see the "boys in 
blue" march by. Our hearts swell with admiration 
and are like to break with pity. These are the men 
who in their country's direst need shook hands with 
their fathers in a new sense of manhood, bent their 
heads on their mothers' shoulders and stood long in 
their embraces, kissed the tear-stained and fear- 
paled cheeks of their sweethearts, and then went 
forth to hardship and peril, and, for aught they 
knew, to death. These are the men who pushed 
their way into the murky swamps of the Wilderness 
when it crackled with musketry and roared with the 
discharge of cannon and the burst of shell. Or 
they are those who stood at Gettysburg unmoved 
by the crashing of the artillery that played for hours 
upon their entrenchments, undismayed by the long, 
gray line of Pickett's men moving forward with a 
veteran courage that seemed irresistible. It may 
be that these men were with Sheridan when he 

93 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

turned defeat into victory at Cedar Creek, or with 
Sherman when, cut off from all communication, 
he pushed his way through the heart of the Con- 
federacy, or with Grant in the battering of Peters- 
burg. Wherever they were, they faced grim death 
again and again. It was no fault of theirs that 
they did not fall in the terrible crash of battle or 
perish miserably in Andersonville or Libby. These 
men, then, are heroes — these whom we see every 
day about our streets. There is one who is a car- 
penter. We saw him shingling a house the other 
day. This one is a grocer. Last week we bought 
a box of crackers from him. This other drives a 
dray and hauls baggage from the depot. Yesterday 
they were all our common townsmen, but to-day 
the memory of high achievements crowns each with 
the laurels of a hero. And a hero each one is; 
and whatever he may do of everyday work, he will 
never be other. It is a little wonderful to live in 
a house built by a hero, and to buy groceries of a 
hero, and to have a trunk taken across town by 
still another hero. The dust of yesterday and its 
common work made us forget, but to-day we re- 
member and do them honor with full hearts. This 
further. We perceive that heroes are but common 

94 



"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 

folk after all. We are surprised at the obvious 
fact. Then its corollary is apparent, and we feel 
a thrill in our hearts. We, being but common folk, 
may yet be heroes. 

So, filled with admiration and all high emotion, 
we look at these heroes again, and our eyes grow 
moist. They marched forth to battle with firm step 
and back-thrown shoulders and clear eyes, in the 
full strength of their unbroken young manhood. 
Now they pass along the road to the decoration 
of their comrades' graves with feeble step and shoul- 
ders bent under the burden of the years and eyes 
dimmed with age, in the tottering weakness of their 
last days. They can't keep step any more, for one 
limps with rheumatism and one shambles with a 
touch of paralysis, and one, weakly tired with the 
unusual march of a mile, lags a little behind. They 
are all glad to halt at last in the coolness of the 
quiet God's Acre, where lie the soldier-dead of the 
country-side. The old commands that once rang 
out so clearly are uttered quaveringly to-day, for 
the voices that were so strong then are weak now 
through the much laughter and the much sobbing 
of the years. They blunder sometimes in the read- 
ing of the solemn ritual of the hour; for the eyes 

95 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

that were so clear are dimmed now by looking long 
and intently upon the problems of life. They were 
young then, and hope shone in their faces, and life 
lay before them with its possibilities, and their paths 
ran ever upward to the hill-crests of achievement. 
Now they are old, and the pathetic twilight of 
memory is on each countenance, and the fullness of 
life is behind them, and their paths lead down- 
ward through the loose sand of increasing decrepi- 
tude to the sunset valley of the grave. They are 
the last of the Old Guard — so few now, though 
once so many. As they, with a love that under- 
stands, place flowers on the green mounds that 
cover silently the forms of the comrades gone a 
day's march ahead, they wonder who will lay the 
garlands on their graves. They doubt not in their 
generous hearts that the coming generations will 
remember and that the air of Memorial Days in 
far-off years will still be redolent with the scent of 
the lilacs and that the beloved flag will wave afresh 
each May over the green mounds where rests their 
dust. But they know that, however much of rever- 
ence will guide the hands and hush the voices of 
those who will observe this day in the years to 
come, there will be lacking that blessed sense of 

96 



"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 

fellowship interwoven in the same experiences. 
Reverence is very good, but, oh, it is not comrade- 
ship! So our hearts become tender, and in the 
midst of our tears we come into the knowledge 
that this faithful remembering of old comrades, this 
brave holding up to the eyes of the whole people 
the worth of a patriotism that counts not one's own 
life dear unto oneself, this cheerful carelessness con- 
cerning any memorial of themselves— so glad are 
they that they may still remember the others — is 
not the least heroic thing which they have done. 
Their simple, deep reverence for the flag and their 
faithful remembrance of those who cemented the 
Union in their blood makes us a little more eager 
to take off our hats to "Old Glory," makes us a 
little more conscious of the debt we owe to the men 
who wrought mightily in the days that were, makes 
us desire to be ever loyal and courageous as soldiers 
of the common good in these days of ours. And 
so do these men serve us not a little. 

But soldiers' graves are not the only ones gar- 
landed to-day, and blue-clad men are not the only 
ones who move about the solemn place in the hush 
of tender memories and wistful regrets. Over there 
7 97 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

is a little group about a monument whose inscrip- 
tion tells that those whom it commemorates were 
gathered like ripe wheat into the Master's granary. 
The strong men and the fair women bending over 
the low green hills pull out a tiny weed here, dig 
a bit about a rosebush there, arrange the wreaths 
lovingly, speaking softly the while of "father" and 
"mother," and wondering if it had been possible 
to do something more for them. It comes into our 
hearts that those who lie there were soldiers, too, 
and heroic in their lives. We are also persuaded 
that one of the things very truly worth while is 
to do our work so simply and so bravely through 
the years that our sons and daughters will come 
some day, with mature understanding, bearing rev- 
erent laurels to our graves. 

Yonder a little woman is weeping quietly over 
the place where one dark day they laid the still 
form of him on whose strength she had thought to 
lean till the shadows of sunset descended on their 
lives. The little one by her side weeps, too, but 
in sympathy and bewilderment rather than for any 
memory the child-mind can hold of the face be- 
neath the sod. The woman is so alone in her woe. 
Her bewilderment, her loneliness, her blind misery 

98 



"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 

grip our hearts like skeleton hands until they ache 
with a bitter helplessness. But a few feet of earth 
between the needle-pricked fingers, the tear-dimmed 
eyes, the pierced heart, and the hand that had held 
her own and the lips that had promised to comfort 
her in all life's sorrow; yet there come to her no 
word of cheer, no tender caress, no encircling arm 
of protection. Those lives that so few years ago 
ran together like the meeting of brooks are now 
separated by infinite distances or impassable bar- 
riers. The bitter mystery of it beats upon our 
hearts and our brains until we can only trust sadly 
and wait till the day comes in which we shall know 
as we are known. But hereafter, in the midst of 
the marriage merriment, when we hear the words, 
"until death do us part," will come the fragrance 
of the lilacs and the memory of that still God's 
Acre with its green grave-billows and the black- 
clad woman broken underneath her woe. 

Blind with our tears we wander away, and when 
we see once more we are near to where a man and 
a woman are beside a little grave — such a little 
grave. The woman, after the fashion of women 
the world over where children are concerned, is 
kneeling down trying to make the little, soft-grassed 

99 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

mound daintier, as though it were the empty crib 
at home. The father stands by with his heart in 
his face — as he used to stand watching the mother 
bathe the tiny form that for months now had not 
been kissed or fondled. Somehow both feel con- 
victed of a strange, impossible neglect, as though 
they had willingly left their babe uncared for, or 
as though the child needed aught that they could 
do for him. The tears run silently down the cheeks 
of the mother, and the father's lips tremble as he 
la5^s a comforting hand on her sob-shaken shoulders. 
What a simple, world-old, infinite tragedy is here! 
The small grave, the little marble slab, the wreath 
of common flowers open the door through which 
we may see it all: the humble home, now strangely 
quiet, where so few months ago baby-feet pattered 
and baby-lips prattled; the broken and stained toys 
upstairs in the drawer, cheap at the beginning, 
marred much but unspeakably precious; the little 
empty bed all undisturbed that had pillowed the 
shining head and had been so often trampled by 
the dainty feet. There are little garments laid 
carefully away, to be taken out and wept over, and 
then put back again ; a lock of golden-brown hair, 
a tiny ring, a silver cup, and a baby's spoon, and 

IOO 



"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 

a thousand memories of broken baby-words and 
funny baby-gestures, and tender baby-caresses. 
They are all immeasurably precious, inexpressibly 
sad. Sometimes the father and the mother wish 
that they might forget it all; but the next instant 
they cry: "No! No! The babe is gone, but these 
memories are ours until we hold our child again." 
"Till we hold our child again." So do the hopes 
of Easter shine on the tears of Memorial Day and 
make a rainbow, at whose feet lies no pot of gold, 
but something more precious far; for there, at the 
very place where they come to the end of the arch 
that will make for their feet a glorious pathway 
beyond the stars, they will find baby-hands and 
baby-feet bathed in its mingled glories, and hear 
baby-laughter at its wondrous beauty, and feel baby- 
kisses of soft welcome for them. So they have their 
dear grave and their memories and their dreams. 
Still more they have, far more than that ; for into 
their lives has come, because they had welcomed this 
babe, and again had said "Good-bye" to him, an 
exquisite fineness that nowhere has been revealed 
more eloquently or more tenderly than in the piteous 
words of the English divine, Dr. Parker: 

"Baby was but two years old when, like a dew- 

IOI 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

drop, he went up to the warm sun, yet he left my 
heart as I have seen ground left out of which a 
storm has torn a great tree. We talk about the in- 
fluence of great thinkers, great speakers, great 
writers; but what about the little infant's power? 
Oh, child of my heart, no poet has been so poetical, 
no soldier so victorious, no benefactor so kind, as 
thy tiny, unconscious self. I feel thy soft kiss on 
my withered lips just now, and would give all that 
I have for one look of thy dreamy eyes. But I 
can not have it. 

"My God! Father of mine in the blue heaven, 
is not this the heaviest cross that can crush the 
weakness of man? Yet that green grave, not three 
feet long, is to me a great estate, making me rich 
with wealth untold. I can pray there. There I 
meet the infant angels; there I see all the mothers 
whose spirits are above; and there my heart says 
strange things in strange words — Baby, I am com- 
ing, coming soon! Do you know me? Do you 
see me? Do you look from sunny places down to 
this cold land of weariness? Oh, Baby; sweet, 
sweet Baby ! I will try for your sake to be a better 
man; I will be kind to other little babies and tell 
them vour name and sometimes let them play with 
I02 



"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 

your toys; but, oh, Baby, Baby, my poor, old heart 
sobs and breaks." 

We wait till the rest are gone and sit long in 
that quiet place with the dead and our thoughts. 
Nor are we without certain unspeakable messages 
from God. Then we go home together in the cool 
hush of the spring sunset, silently. The solemnity 
of the day has discovered an unexpected profundity 
in our own souls. We did not know that they were 
so spacious as to give room for the little we said 
and for the great deal that we left unsaid because 
our speech became suddenly so crude and so insuffi- 
cient. We have a larger respect for ourselves; 
being at the same time somewhat humbled for the 
notable disparity between the wealth of the revela- 
tion we were able to receive and the poverty of 
our power of expression. We are greater than we 
thought, and smaller, and know not whether to be 
glad or sorry. We are sure, only, that we can 
never be so superficial in thinking and in feeling 
and in living again. 

Besides we have caught glimpses of unsuspected 
depths in the lives of others. We will see those old 
soldiers about their common work to-morrow, but 
103 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

we will remember the revelation of their hearts and 
the discovery of their souls that came to us to-day. 
Our hands will instinctively touch our hats in a 
reverent salute, not so much to them as to the ex- 
alted patriotism and the cheerful courage that placed 
them and keeps them ever in the Pantheon of heroes. 
Then, when we see those hard-headed business men 
through their office-windows, busy with their great 
affairs, or catch a glimpse of those stately social 
leaders moving from their big cars to some notable 
function, we will remember that, after all, they are 
just sons and daughters who love and who miss 
their father and their mother, and who do rever- 
ence to their memory. Perhaps we may meet the 
little seamstress hurrying home from her day's work 
to her little room and her child's greeting, and we 
will see not just a commonplace, busy woman con- 
cerned mainly over gusset and seam, tapeline and 
pattern, but a patient life into which has come a 
black tragedy, but in which still abides a pathetic 
joy. Then the tears will come again. And to- 
morrow evening we will see a man and a woman 
enter their gate slowly and go up the walk reluc- 
tantly and open their door with hesitation, and we 
will wonder why they do not hurry into the happy 
104 



"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 

precincts of the home until we catch a glimpse of 
their faces and remember that the rooms are all 
quiet and in order, that the little crib is empty, 
and that no lullaby will be sung to-night for the 
babe that sleeps on in the little grave yonder at 
the foot of the hill. Because we have caught pass- 
ing glimpses into these lives we are aware that 
beneath the ripples of every day, in the deeps of all 
men's hearts, move surging tides of sorrow and joy, 
of dream and reality, of despair and hope. Forever 
life will be to us more dignified, more significant, 
more wonderful. 

We walk home in the sunset thinking silently 
that so will come the end of our lives and the 
dew of tears will fall for us awhile. Then the 
stars will shine through unnumbered years carelessly 
on our forgotten graves, and we wonder sadly if 
the end of life justifies its beginning. The sun has 
sunk behind the western hills, but the dust and the 
clouds have caught up its glory in a hundred mingled 
hues and shines and shades. Yellow and pink and 
orange and red and scarlet, great reaches of sky, 
huge piles of clouds, and the marvelous, shifting 
light and color over all. We stand and look, and 
105 



FESTIVAL SHRINES 

the clouds are mountains now in a vast plain of 
glorious sky. Foothills and crags, canons and 
ridges, high passes bathed in shadow and peaks 
crowned with snow — all splendid in the changing 
light and color. We find ourselves saying rever- 
ently, "As the mountains are round about Jerusa- 
lem — I will look to the hills.' ' Then there is a 
mystery of change, and we are looking on the walls 
of a city with tower and rampart and high gates, 
and, within, the massed roofs, and over all the won- 
drous glory. Now our lips are unconsciously whis- 
pering: "And I saw the new Jerusalem, coming 
down from God out of heaven, arrayed as a bride 
for her husband — and her walls were precious stones 
— her gates were pearls — the glory of God shall 
lighten it — they shall bring the glory and the honor 
of the nations into it." Then the towers fall and 
the walls crumble and the gates vanish. We look 
upon homes, palaces, and mansions, but still homes 
lighted in the deepening twilight with the warm, 
welcoming glow of hearth-fires. And those who 
walk the streets are all clad in rich robes, and the 
faces that look out of the windows are bright with 
happiness, and One resplendent in a kind of out- 
shining glory passes from house to house. Aged 
106 



"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 

fathers and mothers bow their heads for His bless- 
ing; strong men and women talk eagerly with Him ; 
children cling to His garments, and He carries a 
babe in His arms. Now we know that we are 
looking upon what David saw when he sang, "I 
shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." We 
are seeing the vision of Jesus when He said: "In 
My Father's city are many palaces. I go to pre- 
pare a place for you, that where I am, there ye 
may be also." 

We walk home in the gathering dark and part 
with a silent handgrip, knowing that deeper than 
the profound tragedies of life, deeper than our own 
souls are the ways and the love of our God. With 
the comforting pressure of the Everlasting Arms 
beneath us we fall asleep, breathing the heavy fra- 
grance of the lilacs through our open windows. 



107 



AUG 9 1913 



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